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Hello everyone, greetings from the Slipstream! Tokaro here to give you my rundown on a little game called Heavy Rain.

Heavy Rain is a game by David Cage of Quantic Dream who made a title called Farenheit or Indigo Prophecy over here.

Quantic Dream is a French developer that specializes in ruining what could make a game beyond the pale. I say thing because of SPOLERS Indigo Prophecy's famous lol mayan robots ending turning potential Game of the Year into Shame of the Year. Now, Heavy Rain is seriously lacking mayan robots but don't worry, it sucks too.

Why does it suck, Tokaro!? Because of some severe gameplay flaws and plot holes. Let me elaberate. Heavy Rain is composed of nothing but Quick Time Events, creating an action packed cinematic feel to the game. You make a mistake and it's all over, you can die and there are multiple endings and...and...it's really lame. First of all, despite the production values of this vide game, they didn't get Native English speaking VA's for the English dialogue, given this is a story driven video game, bad voice acting has a really negative effect on how things play out.

The main gameplay flaws are:

1. When you open a door, you don't do it frame by frame, inching your arm by holding the analog stick forward looks sluggish and takes you out of the game.

2. There are plenty of moments where you are pressing triangle, square, L1, R1, O and SIXAXISing at the same time. I found some of these moments to be downright infuriating given I was juggling the controller to try and get through electrical wires.

3. Walking. Although this is meant to be a down to Earth video game, nobody walks this slowly consistently. I don't expect there to be some kind of roadie run function or anything but I wouldn't mind if the neutral walk was a bit more brisk.

4. The game has points of no action and high action and no in between. You do a mission, get into a fight and have a lot of fun and then you go home and iron your shirt or drink some orange juice. There is no balance between the high-octane moments and the incredibly mundane events. Your only incentive to slog through the mundane events is to GET TO the events where you fight in a junkyard or are beating up some thug who's trying to kill you. The hurdles to get to the enjoyment part of the game are absolutely staggering.

Heavy Rain is that kind of game that every beret wearing, cheese scarfing art**** gamer will put on a pedestal and revere as a brilliant representation of what games should be. Games should not be pre-programmed cutscenes with a sequence of QTE's flashing and mundane activities. Games are meant to be fun and although Heavy Rain had moments of enjoyment in it, they were sandwiched in between absolutely boring moments that made me contemplate death. I do not blame the folks at Quantic Dream for experimenting with the video game formula but to the video game journalists, get off of Heavy Rain's nuts all ready! If this was a movie, it would be turned down in a second. There are glaring plot holes that are never regarded, when they were brought up only 1 hour previous to the next plot point.

SPOILERS MAKE MADISON CRY

• Ethan Mars was in a coma during the Origami Killings, why is he the prime suspect?
• Scott Shelby's mother discloses his identity as the Origami Killer to Madison Paige and she is shocked. Why is she shocked? She never met him, she doesn't know who he is?
• You can read thoughts in this game, so explain this...why wasn't one of Scott Shelby's thoughts "I'm the F*&^ING ORIGAMI KILLER!!" you can't supress thoughts past the concious and the unconcious. It would constantly be in his mind unless he has a split personality like Edward Norton in Fight Club (which he doesn't) or if his identity is between the ego and the id to bring in Freudian theories (which also doesn't make sense because he reveals his indentity to Ethan and Norman during the last sequence)
• Given Shelby is the origami killer, why don't you have the option to let the suicidal mom die in the bathroom? He says that he was pretending to be a detectiveso he could bury evidence that connect him to the killings. I understand that they were trying to hide his indentity but it goes against his own statements later on in the game.
• Why does Madison come on to you!? I mean, it's not even with due cause. She's patching you up for the first time then suddenly, sucking face.
• Norman Jayden is from the future because that kind of virtual construct tech could not exist within the FBI 1 year in the future. The game was trying to be down to earth and then suddenly bam VIRTUAL CONSTRCT! LET'S LIVE ON MARS!!
• Also, there aren't a lot of black people in PHILIDELPHIA!! A city nearly dominated by the African-American population.

This game is a beautiful mess, like a car crash or something. It gets a lot wrong and looks very nice while it's doing it. The visuals are high tier despite some uncanny valley problems where people look lifeless. The music is outstanding but the voice work is not. I played it in french so I could get as far away from NAHMAN JAYDEN and his Boston accent. I enjoyed some parts of Heavy Rain but all and all, it blew. Heavy Rain will forever be regarded as a work of art among the video game journalism crews who had the wool pulled over their eyes.

Get Dragon's Lair instead. It's cheaper and probably longer too.